We’ve first heard about ST Ericsson NovaThor L8580 in July 2012, and the company demonstrated their new processor at CES 2013. This SoC features 4 (or is it 2?) Cortex A9 cores, and a PowerVR SGX544 GPU, but the real advantage of this processor is the new process technology called FD-SOI (Fully Depleted Silicon On Insulator) which, combined with some other power and performance optimization techniques, allows some fun stuffs such as:
- 2.8 GHz dual core operation
- 1 GHz operation at 0.63V instead of 1.1V when using bulk CMOS technology.
You can see those 2 use cases in the video demo. In the first demo, a phone prototype based on L8580 @ 2.8Ghz is clearly faster than the Samsung Galaxy S3 based on Exynos 4412, and the second demo shows power measurement of the prototype when ran at 1GHz.
Other key features of L8580:
- Low-power eQuad processor clocked at up to 2.5Ghz based on ARM Cortex-A9 processor
- Imagination Technologies POWERVR SGX544 GPU
- Dual multimedia DSP for low-power, flexible media processing
- High-bandwidth Dual LP-DDR2 interface
- Full HD 1080p camcorder, multiple codecs supported (H264 HP, VC-1, MPEG-4), 3D HD video capture and display
- High-resolution, touchscreen display support up to WUXGA
- Simultaneous dual display support up to dual qHD
- Dual camera support up to 20 Mpixel and 5 Mpixel
- Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GNSS (GPS+GLONASS), FM and NFC enabled platform
- LTE FDD/TDD, HSPA+, TD-SCDMA, EDGE with rdio supporting up to 10 LTE/WCDMA/GSM bands.
- Built-in USB 2.0, HDMI out
- Optional support for mobile TV standards
You can find more information on ST Ericsson Novathor L8580 page.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
Support CNX Software! Donate via cryptocurrencies, become a Patron on Patreon, or purchase goods on Amazon or Aliexpress
